Research concludes that tiered data plans are a win for consumers

FierceWireless has a great article in which Roger Entner from The Nielsen Company breaks down smartphone data usage obtained from 60,000 cellphone bills. Apart from the fact that more than 1/3 of smartphone users do not have data plans and that 23% overall use no data per month, that data reveals that 6% of smartphone users are going through half of the data consumed. And what data everyone else using doesn’t add up to a whole lot. Although averages are not the best example to point to for a number of reasons, the average smartphone user went through 298MB of data in Q1 2010, up 230% YoY. Despite this growth, the reality is that all but all but 1% of smartphones users stand to benefit from being on a tiered data plan. In fact, on the whole, the only losers when it comes to tiered data are the carriers, as they lose out on revenue each and every time someone cancels their unlimited plan and moves to a tiered plan. There are quite a few other interesting tidbits to be learned from the article, so do hit the jump to check it out.